


Salvage Rights

by vanillafluffy



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: BAMF Tony Stark, Bechdel Test, Bechdel Test Pass, Dubious Science, Female Characters, Female Friendship, Female Protagonist, Gen, Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, Post-Iron Man 3, STEM, Science, Science Experiments, Submarines, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Is a Good Bro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-06 23:20:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17949113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanillafluffy/pseuds/vanillafluffy
Summary: Three friends, a boat, and the remains of Tony Stark's mansion. Scuba-diving around the ruins, Lulu makes a discovery that's going to change her life...with a little help from Tony Stark himself.





	Salvage Rights

The boat, _Honkers_ , is a thirty-five foot Sea Ray, owned by Dr. Aronnax--Lisa’s dad, a plastic surgeon. She’s supposed to be working on a term paper for Film Studies this weekend--it’s due next week, and she hasn’t even started writing it. Instead, she’s watched all the source material about five times each--it’s on the symbolism of water and bridges in the Bourne movies--and she’s declared that she needs to get out on the ocean for more inspiration. Personally, I think she's just got a major thing for Matt Damon, but hey, that's legit.

Zee is up for it. She’s the one who proposed combining a day on the water with a little underwater exploring--she wants to scuba-dive the area below the cliff where Tony Stark’s Malibu mansion used to be. Ecology is her big thing, and she wants to see what effect the collapse of hill and house have had on the surrounding marine ecosystems. Maybe be a whistle-blower if it turns out there are toxic chemicals leeching into the ocean. If Stark made a mess, he should pay for the clean up, right?

Me? I’m trying to play it cool, but I’m dying to dive the site and see if I can retrieve anything good from whatever might be left of Stark’s lab. Because, face it, my folks have some money, but they’re not billionaires--any toys he had are up for grabs, the way I see it, and they’re bound to be several orders of magnitude better than anything I could afford.

I would’ve liked to take _Anemone_ , but Lisa put her foot down when I suggested it. She’s not going to risk towing a thirteen-foot long personal submersible--if the Sea Ray blew an engine, her dad would skin her. So, a wetsuit it is.

Lisa stays topside. Somebody has to keep an eye on the boat. She says she’s going to make some notes for her paper. And probably slurp down a few wine coolers while she’s at it, but whatever.

Zee’s wetsuit is two-tone blue, easy to see from a distance. Mine is plain black with acid orange rings around the wrists and ankles. Less eye-catching, but I wasn’t thinking about that when I chose it. It had good reviews and it was on sale. Works for me.

I have a mesh dive bag clipped to my belt in case I run across any juicy debris. The guy is a freaking genius--I mean seriously, Stark built the Iron Man armor, so you know he’s got the tech--the right surplus parts could totally upgrade _Anemone_ …she’s pretty basic. I’ve made improvements on the original kit, but her batteries and life support are limited; she only has a two-three hour dive window, and her top speed is pathetic. That’s way I needed to tow her out here--otherwise I wouldn’t have had any power left to explore with--much less make it home afterward.

The wreckage of the house isn’t deeply submerged--twenty to thirty feet at most--a jumble of rock, concrete and relics from the house itself. A big couch, right side up, with a boulder sitting squarely in the middle of it…a long jagged line of broken glass with a strip of window frame holding it rigid like a big glass knife. It’s like a modern-day Pompeii, the city that was buried by a volcano nearly two thousand years ago--except this destructive force wasn’t Mother Nature’s.

While I’m surveying the detritus, Zee is taking water samples. She has a selection of little glass vials in her own dive bag. I watch her scoop up sand or something and stopper it. She’s minoring in Organic Chemistry, so knowing her, she’ll get home and spend the rest of the weekend analyzing samples.

It’s the color that catches my eye first--it’s cherry red. The shape is too smooth to be anything but man-made. I approach. It isn’t just red--it’s red and gold. It’s a metal arm.

I’ve seen enough pictures to be able to guess what it is--part of an Iron Man suit. I’m only in my second year of Engineering, but I know the thrusters are in the hands and feet of the suit. Something like that, hooked up to _Anemone_? That would really speed things up! Right now, I get about five miles an hour, which is just sad.

I just have to figure out how to get it loose. It’s attached to the upper part of the arm--hell, it might be a whole damn suit of armor for all I know!--but there’s chunk of concrete the size of a baby grand pinning it down.

Studying it for a moment, I try to discern whether it can easily be rolled to one side. Regretfully, no. It’s flat, part of some slab construction--there’s a length of rebar sticking out of one end. Attach a line from the surface? Yeah, sure. Lisa wasn’t willing to tow my sub, she’s not going to risk _Honkers_ on a hunk of concrete that weighs ten times as much.

It makes sense that the whole assembly would come apart--armor isn’t one piece, after all--can I uncouple it? Even if it’s just the glove--that’s the only thing I really want, anyway. 

I spend about five minutes twisting and jiggling the gauntlet. From a distance, I probably look like I’m arm-wrestling the freaking thing as I look for some kind of release mechanism. At last, almost by accident, I press and rotate it just so, and the glove comes away in my hand.

Success! I deposit it into my dive bag and continue looking for fallout from Stark’s hubris.

Zee is close to the cliff, busy taking photos of something. I head over there with my prize. She’s found what’s left of a car. It’s landed mostly upright--the nose is crumpled--it looks like it hit a rock and bounced. Now the front end is balanced on a chunk of cliff fragment, tilted at about forty-five degrees. Too bad. It’s some kind of flashy sports car, it probably cost a mint, if it was Stark’s.

She’s documenting the mess--I’m sure she’s already gotten a water sample to see if it’s leaking toxins--gas, transmission fluid, brake fluid--so she can demonstrate the environmental impact. Well, that’s her priority. I’ve got my own.

About twenty minutes left before we need to surface. I wish I had a floor plan of the house, it might give me a better idea of where to look. I’m pretty sure the lower level was the garage, and possibly the lab. The missile came in on this side, hitting the cliff…so the house would’ve come down on top of the rubble from the cliff..

Theoretically, the cliff rock should be the lowest strata, then the contents of the lower floor. The trouble is, the upper floor then pancaked on top of all that other stuff, so most of the lab contents are likely to be buried under the structural members of the first floor, the contents of the first floor, walls of the house itself, and the roof. I was beyond lucky to find what I have.

I spend my remaining time swimming a search pattern. The only recognizable thing I find is a men’s black patent leather dress shoe. I leave it, catch Zee’s attention, and indicate I'm heading for the surface.

Lisa is lounging on a chaise, with a mermaid tail pulled up to her waist and a silk shirt over her shoulders. There’s a bottle of SPF 50 on the side table next to her wine cooler. She’s diligent about skin care--her dad’s a plastic surgeon and her mom’s a dermatologist, so she was raised on all kinds of horror stories about skin cancer--but other than smelling like a pina colada most of the time, she’s your typical laid-back California blonde.

“Find anything good, Lulu?” she yawns.

“I sure did!” I pull myself onto the stern and hold up my trophy. “Check this out!”

As she’s inspecting the dismembered glove, Zee breaks the surface and joins us on _Honkers_. She’s wringing water out of the long blonde braid that hangs down her back. “What did you find?” she wants to know.

Lisa is a freckle-faced blond who looks like she’d be cast as the wholesome girl next door, while Zee is more the frosty Scandinavian type. Add to that, she’s literally six-feet tall and looks like a supermodel--Lisa's a mere five-foot ten. Which just goes to show how deceptive looks are, because sweet-looking Lisa is hardcore into action movies and wants to make films that’ll give Tarantino a run for his money, while Zee (given name, Zandra in honor of her mom's fave fashion designer) rarely makes an issue of her looks, and god forbid you should treat her like a blonde bimbo. She hates cold weather and has plans to retire to a South Seas island by the time she’s forty--preferably one with some great coral formations to dive.

I’m the odd woman out. I take after my mom, whose family is Hawaiian since forever. My dad’s WASP DNA wasn’t enough to dilute all that Polynesian ancestry. I’ve got dark, straight hair kept bobbed. They look like mermaids. I look like a geek--a short geek, at that. Truth in advertising. I’d rather spend my time working on my tech projects that fussing with my hair and I own more swimsuits than dresses.

We all live on Sultana Close, in Malibu, which is how we got together initially. We have different hobbies and interests, but somehow we bonded. 

“Oh my God, Lulu!” Zee stares at the gauntlet. “That’s from Iron Man! What are you going to do with it?”

“See if I can figure out how to use it to propel _Anemone_ ,” I tell her with a grin. Okay, full disclosure: Lulu is short for Honolulu, which is my mom’s hometown and where she and my dad met. For a while in middle school, I went through a phase where I insisted on being called Lauren, but it didn’t stick. So, I’m Lulu.

“How? I mean, that thing’s not exactly universal, like a USB drive.” Lisa looks skeptical.

“I’ll think of something.”

Cue the montage sequence here, Lisa would say. I spend the next few days fiddling with the glove. Getting the thruster out of it takes a couple of those days--Stark builds his toys to last--but I finally dismount it and figure out how to wire it to the battery pack on _Anemone_. My idea is just to rev it up and see what the gauges register as far as propulsion speeds go. I’ll have the engines in neutral, I won’t actually be going anywhere.

The trouble is, it’s a thruster. It thrusts. _Anemone_ jumps out of her cradle like a fish trying to swim upstream, and I watch aghast as she zooms away. 

The only good thing is, it draws so much power that she only gets about two hundred yards before the battery pack dies. Retrieval takes hours, and I swear like a sailor the whole time I’m dragging it back to the boathouse with our rowboat. Oh sure, it’s great that I got it to work. But it’s about as useful as driving a car with a nitrous booster--it has severe limitations. 

Clearly, I need a power supply. Something with a lot more oomph than I’ve got.

I keep coming back to the thought that Stark _has_ some kind of power source. The pictures I’ve seen of Iron Man show a glowing blue light in the middle of his chest. I'm certain that's what makes it go. I need to see if I can find the rest of the suit and snag that.

Lisa is up to her ears trying to finish her paper on time. Zee blows up my phone with indignant comments about the results she’s been getting on the water samples she took--the pollutants from Stark’s vehicles are leaking into the waters around the cliff!--but Zee’s not inclined to go out for another dive immediately, she needs to write up her findings.

Diving alone can be risky, but I don’t feel like I’ve got much of a choice. 

Which is how I end up back at the other end of Malibu, parking out of sight in what used to be Tony Stark’s driveway, sneaking down the hill through the underbrush to the beach in my wetsuit and going into the water while carrying a heavy-duty car jack. Because no matter how many Wheaties I eat, there’s no way I can move that giant slab of concrete all by myself. It’s going to take some leverage, and that jack is rated for a 1971 Buick, which is pretty massive. It was parked in our garage when we bought the place. Keith and Leilani, the 'rents, joked that it looked like a pimp mobile, and for all we know, Jimmy Hoffa could be buried in the backyard. They sold the car, but the jack has been collecting dust forever, and I'm pretty sure they'll never miss it.

Using the wrecked car and the couch as landmarks, it doesn’t take long to find the slab with the red arm still sticking out from under it. I assess the surrounding rubble for stability, managing to get the jack wedged under one side of the huge weight. That’s the easiest part, not that any of it is easy. For one thing, concrete is not buoyant underwater. I am, which makes cranking the handle on the jack a ridiculous effort. I wedge the tips of my flippers under some debris for traction. I’m trying to keep my breathing even, because I don’t want to have to go back to the car for my spare tank, although when the rock visibly moves, I laugh out loud, sending a ribbon of bubbles streaming upward. 

Finally, there’s a gap between the shoulder of the suit and the rock. I start hauling on it, trying to drag it out from under. The whole arm and shoulder are out--the slab wobbles, and the whole damn thing gives way, taking the jack with it. I yank my feet out of the way just in time--getting my flippers caught under that thing? Best case scenario, I'd need new flippers. Worst case, I'd be pinned there and drown. Intermediate danger, one or more broken feet. When it settles, there's less of the arm visible than when I started.

It’s a moot point, though. I got a look at the breastplate before the collapse, and there was nothing there. The hole where the power source should’ve been was empty.

According to my air gauge, I’ve still got a while before I have to surface. The first thing I do is circle around the slab, hoping that when it shifted something else may have come to light. No, of course not. It seems finding the gauntlet was beginner’s luck--and my luck has run out.

I ought to give up and go in. It’s getting late, and I don’t want to have to climb back up to the driveway in total darkness. I’m looking around one last time before heading for shore, when I see it. 

Out beyond the debris field, there’s a light. My first thought is that it’s some weird diffraction of the setting sun, maybe a reflection off some random piece of glass or chrome--but the angle strikes me as wrong, somehow. I swim toward it.

There’s not a lot of debris this far out, and what there is is mostly fist-sized pieces. 

The thing glowing blue at me from the ocean floor is a bit bigger than my fist. It’s ringed in what could be chrome, but is probably something a lot more esoteric. It weighs maybe half a kilo. I stare at it entranced for a moment, then I hastily secure the power source in my dive bag. I’ve found exactly what I need--now to get it home and make it work!

Yeah, back to the drawing board. In more ways that one--determining how to reconfigure the power input to the propeller from the batteries to the Blue Light Special makes hooking the thruster up look easy as Legos. I need to figure out how to connect it so I can operate lights and life support but _not_ the engine/thruster. The last thing I want is a repeat of the test incident. I’m lucky--my folks are out of town for a few weeks, so there’s no one to comment when I spend literally days working on the project. I’m living on protein bars and Gatorade Zero while I disassemble components I so painstakingly put together when I built _Anemone_. Half the time, I don’t even bother going to bed, just crash in my chair in front of my workbench.

The night I finally get _Anemone’s_ instruments to light up from the power source, I celebrate with a pizza. Which, when I think about it, is the first real food I’ve had in at least five days. Then I fall asleep on the couch, replete. Tomorrow, I can start tests on power output.

Banging on the door wakes me. For a few seconds, I’m so out of it I’m not sure why I’ve fallen asleep in my clothes with a half-empty pizza box on the coffee table or what all the ruckus is.

A familiar voice is hollering, “Come on, Lulu! Answer your phone! Answer the door!”

My phone is on the coffee table. I tilt it and there’s a screaming text from Zee: ANSWER THE DOOR! YOU NEED TO SEE THIS!

Gah. Too much morning…Saturday morning? Where has this week gone? And it’s almost ten a.m., so I’ve had about fourteen hours of sleep. I still feel out of it, though.

I text back. _Chill. Just woke up._

I stumble from the living room to the powder room by the front entryway. My back teeth are floating. After I’ve peed, I wash my hands and splash cold water on my face in an attempt to shock my brain awake. What the hell is such a big deal that Zee’s beating my door down on a Saturday morning? I’m wearing the same tee and shorts I’ve had on for days, I look like shit--but what the hell, she’s my friend, she won’t judge.

“What’s so damn important?” I demand, flinging the front door wide.

Zee stands there looking fresh and tidy. She’s not alone. 

If there’s anything guaranteed to wake a person up, it’s opening the door to find Tony Stark standing on their front porch.

My mind boggles and the first thing out of my mouth is, “What the hell?” Gracious, right? I give Zee the Evil Eye. Is she crazy dragging him over here without talking to me first?

“Gawd, Lulu--when’s the last time you had a shower?” she asks, wrinkling her nose.

I might be able to tell her if I knew what day it was. Wait, it’s Saturday. That’s right, I just checked that. I recovered the power source ten days ago and I’ve been down the techno-rabbit hole ever since. I had a cold shower to wake up on Wednesday? Thursday? Not important. What’s important is, what the hell is Tony Stark doing here?!

“Ms. Green was telling me about your underwater expedition at the site of my former home,” he says with a smile.

Stark is shorter than I expected, just a couple inches taller than I am. Up close, I can see fine lines crinkling at the corners of his eyes. From pictures, I thought he was thirty-something, but I revise that to at least forty. There’s no grey in his dark hair or trademark goatee, though, and he’s pretty buff for an older guy. Under The Who tee he’s wearing, he’s jacked.

“He’s already started a thorough clean up of the sources of off-shore contamination.” Zee announces triumphantly. She steps forward, edging past me, Stark trailing in her wake.

“Wonderful,” I say, wishing she’d left me out of it.

“Well, _that’s_ interesting,” Stark comments as we enter the living room. I wince, because I’d forgotten I was tinkering with his thruster last night while scarfing my ham and pineapple white pizza.

Using the controls from an old electric blanket, I figured out how to regulate the output. Right now, it’s plugged in to one side of the couch, levitating a heavy leather ottoman piled with my backpack, a stack of textbooks and my laptop. It’s set on “low” and about seventy-five pounds of stuff effortlessly hovers two feet above the Ikat carpet. It’s been that was the whole time I was sleeping and still seems pretty solid. I’d sat on it last night--another hundred and sixteen pounds had no effect.

After I power down the unit and unplug the controls, Stark inspects the way I have it rigged. “Ingenious,” he compliments me. “Have you tried it with direct current?”

I grit my teeth. “Yes. It took off like a rocket and drained the batteries in about two hundred yards.” 

“The first time I powered up all four of them, I almost went through the roof,” he counters. “And that was at ten percent thrust.” He’s grinning at the memory. Good-looking, smart--the trouble is, I have a bad feeling about why he’s here. “Thanks for recovering my property,” he says, confirming my worst fears.

“I have salvage rights!” I snap. I’m going to wring Zee’s neck for bringing him over here. Death glare in her direction.

“Look,” he sighs, “You really don’t want to bring lawyers into this, do you?” Because of course, he and his billions can hire _all_ the lawyers, I infer. “I’m willing to compensate you for your time and trouble, Ms. Mason. What do you say?”

I silently thank the universe that I didn’t tell Zee about my second trip out to the ruins. She may have told him about the thruster, but she doesn’t know about the power source--so she can’t have spilled those beans. That’s the important thing. I’m not happy about losing the thruster, but losing them both would be a disaster.

“And what do you call fair compensation?” I ask matter-of-factly. I’ll take whatever I can get, I just want him and my traitorous friend the hell out of here.

“How does fifty thousand dollars sound?”

It would sound fantastic--if I thought I'd be able to duplicate the tech for that. There’s still the power source, I remind myself. Maybe I won’t be able to go as fast as I could with the thruster, but steady, reliable power? Being able to travel more than a couple miles? Good trade off.

“That sounds pretty good, but I’d like to know more about how that thing works.”

“If you had the correct power source, like the arc reactor that powered the suit, it generates a field--” He goes into an extended explanation and it’s all I can do not to howl. I was so close! But at least now I have the principle--and the terminology. Arc reactor--that’s what I’ve got….

“And the money?” Zee asks helpfully. “I’ve got a free ride on tuition for the next five years _and_ Mr. Stark made a fat contribution to the Seven Seas Project.”

“Cash or certified check?” he wants to know.

I nearly say, “PayPal,” but under the circumstances… “Cash would be good.”

“Sure thing.” He pulls out his phone and fires off a text. “It’ll be here in about a half-hour.”

Which means I have to put up with Tony Stark for another thirty minutes. I may as well pick his brains while I’m at it. “How else would I go about building one of those…repulsors?”

He gestures toward the ottoman. “Hey, that was a pretty good parlor trick, but you don’t really need repulsors, do you?”

“Yeah, I kind of do. I have a personal submersible that has about as much get up and go as a golf cart. If I could run something like that--” I point to the repulsor lying on the coffee table “with less juice than it takes to run the propeller, I could go farther, faster and extend the battery life so I could stay down longer.”

It’s also crossed my mind that a spare repulsor would come in handy if I ran out of gas. “Have you ever thought of powering a vehicle with one or more of those to reduce emissions?” 

“You’re a bright kid.”

“I’m nineteen.” At least he’s not being a sexist pig. If he addressed me as ‘a bright girl’, I’d chew him out for it.

“I know plenty of people twice your age who couldn’t have figured out how to re-rig that thing. Ms. Green says you’re an Engineering major? I’d be happy to help fund that. Might be able to get you a Stark Industries internship…I believe in encouraging innovation.”

Which is nice of him, but I’m still uneasy about his motives. Still, fifty thousand dollars cash, plus tuition and a job? Too bad I couldn’t have recovered the whole suit, I probably could’ve netted six figures.

I listen to Tony Stark talk at length about the STEM programs he underwrites. Zee has disappeared somewhere, probably texting her news to Lisa and anybody else she can think of. I nod, and ask questions from time to time--but he won’t give me any nuts-and-bolts details on the repulsor tech other than vague hints.

The doorbell rings--it’s a hushed chime, easy to sleep through but attention-getting enough when I’m awake. There stands a stocky man in a suit, brandishing a manila envelope.

“Thanks, Happy.” Stark leans past me to take the envelope from him. “Stick around. I’ll be out soon.”

We return to the living room, and Stark opens the envelope, spilling packets of twenties onto the coffee table. “Fifty thousand dollars, as agreed,” he says pleasantly.

Fifty thousand dollars is a lot of money. Moreover, it’s fifty thousand that my parents don’t have to know I have. It may not be able to build me repulsors, but I’m pretty sure I can finagle something worthwhile. I can think of certain equipment that would definitely enhance _Anemone_ , and there are other projects I’ve imagined that were totally pie-in-the-sky without money. 

“Here you go.” I hand him the repulsor, controls and all.

“I’ll need the rest of it, Ms. Mason.”

For a split second, I panic. Not wait--the glove. He wants the stupid glove. For a minute, I can’t think of where it is--please god, not out in the boathouse!--and then I remember seeing it on the breakfast bar when I came in last night. “Right, sure. Here it is.”

I present him with the red and gold gauntlet, smiling, willing him to take it and leave me alone with my loot…and my arc reactor.

Stark holds the cast-off glove and sighs, looking disappointed. “ _Everything_ , Ms. Mason.”

“Look, I might have lost a screw while I was taking it apart. If I run across it, I’ll mail it to you.”

He pulls his phone out, swipes and taps for a moment. Shows me a display with a winking blue dot. “The arc reactor has a unique energy signature,” he informs me. “Right now, it’s about thirty yards that way--boathouse?”

 _Son of a bitch._ He knows. It’s not much consolation that Zee didn’t tell him--I’m still going to lose it. Fifty thousand pales beside the loss of the arc reactor. I stare at him, trying to think of a way out, a way to save it--reopen negotiations, some way to get him out of here without repossessing what I worked so hard for.

“Hey, Lulu, I started a load of laundry--” Zee’s picked the wrong moment to pop into the kitchen. 

On some level, it still feels like this is all her fault. I grab a cutting board and throw it at her. I have good aim, but she has faster reflexes. She ducks back out of sight while the cutting board bounces off the accent wall and clatters on the tile floor.

“That wasn’t the deal!" I yowl. "Take your damn thruster and fuck off!”

Rather than fucking off, Stark seats himself on a bar stool. He hikes up his shirt. “See that?” The middle of his chest looks sunken, like there’s a hunk of bone missing. The scar tissue around it is still angry and red. “That’s why I didn’t start recovery on the site right away. I was busy recovering from major surgery. Otherwise, there wouldn’t’ve have been any goodies out there for you to scoop up.”

Looking at it, I feel a little queasy. He isn’t playing me for sympathy, but-- Then I remember the vacant hole in the sunken armor. The truth dawns on me. “It was in there, wasn’t it? The arc reactor? But...why?”

“Shrapnel,” he replies tersely. “Maybe you heard that I was taken prisoner a few years ago?”

I nod. I remember. He went missing in the Middle East, was recovered months later, then a few weeks after he returned, the Iron Man story broke. 

“The conditions there were too primitive for surgery to extract the shrapnel, even if a qualified doctor was available. The arc reactor kept the shrapnel from lacerating my heart.”

Okay, I understand him not wanting to lose something like that. And face it, keeping something like that would be more than a little icky. It doesn’t reconcile me to the loss, but he isn’t being unreasonable. “It’s in the boathouse,”I say with resignation, and lead the way.

I take my time disconnecting the arc reactor. I don’t want to damage anything. I’ll have to hook the batteries back up...again. I remember how excited I was two years ago when I finished building the kit--now it just seems like an over-sized bath toy.

Stark doesn’t try to hurry me. I answer his questions. He wants to know why I configured thing the way I did, and I explain at length. I show him the calculations I made projecting the abilities of the repulsor working in sync with the arc reactor. He disagrees, saying I’ve drastically underestimated the amount of power output the arc reactor provides.

We get side-tracked for twenty glorious minutes as he scribbles corrections to my notes. I could run practically forever! Except for…y’know, snacks and bathroom breaks. That and the fact that it’s going away…it would have been so great.

“What was your next move?” he wants to know. “You were going to plug in the repulsor and take off for Australia?”

Either he’s a dumbass (which he's not), or he thinks I am. I glare at him. “Of course not! I’d be an idiot to think I could jump into it and go! For one thing, if I’m boosting the speed by two thousand percent, I’d need to stabilize the driveshaft. I’d have to fabricate a flywheel to counter-balance the vibration to keep it from warping. This isn’t exactly plug-and-play, you know!”

He raises his hands. “Hey, I’m not saying you’re not smart. I think all this is pretty amazing,” he says seriously. “But I remember being young and reckless--I’d feel really shitty if something bad happened to you because of something I built.”

Absently, he rubs his chest.

“Here you go.” I hand over the arc reactor. It’s taking a piece of my heart with it. He looks troubled, or maybe he’s still in pain from his surgery. “I hope you feel better.”

“Thanks. I’ll be in touch. Nice knowing you, Ms. Mason.”

I mend fences with Zee, groveling, because I was pretty far out of line throwing shit at her. She shrugs my outburst off with her typical good humor. “Aw, hell, Lulu--you’re always grumpy when you wake up.” We agree that the cash will be our little secret--all my folks really need to know about is the tuition subsidy, if it actually comes through.

It does. The following Thursday, I get a registered letter from the bursar’s office, explaining that I’m pre-approved for any and all classes I want to take for the next five years, and I basically have carte blanche at the bookstore. Sweet.

So why am I so miserable?

 _Anemone_ sits in the boathouse, exactly the way I left her after Stark walked out. I haven’t been scouring catalogs looking for upgrades, even though I could easily afford to. I go back and forth to classes, absorbing the material on autopilot. I pick up the house--Keith and Leilani will be back next week. I’m going through the motions, but not even hanging out with Zee and Lisa cheers me up.

I’m conscientiously cleaning out the fridge when the doorbell rings. No one's visible on the security camera when I check it, but there’s a package sitting on the welcome mat.

This wasn’t delivers by any regular shipper. There’s no mailing label--not even an address. Just my name: _Ms. Lulu Mason_. I recognize that slanted printing, and my heart beats a little faster.

Inside the box is the mother lode. There are bags of components, a book of schematic diagrams…my brain comes back online and my hands shake as I flip through them. Stark paid more attention than I thought. There’s a blueprint for a CO2 converter based on hydro-dynamic energy--reducing the drain on the batteries. A two-page table has calculations for weight ratios for flywheels based on length of driveshaft. Advice on metallurgy for structural reinforcement because increased power equals greater torque. Wow. 

I rifle through the baggies. There’s--a repulsor! It’s smaller than the one I had, but I have no doubt it’s up to the job. A coiled wiring harness for the CO2 converter, which I’m apparently going to have to build from the schematics. Coming from Stark, that’s a sign of faith in my abilities.

At the very bottom of the carton is a cardboard box about the size of an Altoids tin. Prying it open and unwrapping the pouch of foam inside, I find an inch-square tile of what looks like blue glass, rimmed with shiny silver metal. Blue light twinkles from its depths. Inspecting it reveals a male USB connection integrated to the frame.

The tile isn’t the only thing that’s glowing. An hour ago, I was subterranean, now I’m soaring, high on possibilities.

There’s a note.

_This quite isn’t what you think it is, but it’s similar. I think you’ll like it. Specs are on page nineteen of the manual. Let me know how it goes. --T.S._

Page nineteen makes me very, very happy. I may not be able to go around the world in _Anemone_ , but we _are_ going to be going places, that’s for sure.

Good thing I didn’t put her back together, I think as I cradle my Stark Loot Crate and scamper toward the boathouse. It would’ve been a waste of time. I’d have to take it apart again to install Stark’s largess. Unlike the salvage makeover, this upgrade is going to go a lot more smoothly, thanks to Tony Stark. Plug and play, baby!

 

…

**Author's Note:**

> Post credits:
> 
> The trio, watching _From Dusk Til Dawn:_  
>  Lisa: I didn't know there were that many quarts of cherry syrup in the human body.  
> Lulu: How many bullets does that gun fire before it needs to be reloaded? What is it, a magic gun?  
> Zee: I wonder, if you reconstituted blood meal, if vampires could live on it.  
> Lulu and Lisa stare at her.
> 
> ===========
> 
> Gratuitous _20,000 Leagues Under the Sea_ references:
> 
> Lisa Aronnax -- Professor Pierre Aronnax is the protagonist of _20,000 Leagues Under the Sea_
> 
> Zandra (Zee) Green -- Zee is Dutch for sea. Green in French is Verne. Jules Verne wrote _20,000 Leagues Under the Sea_
> 
> Honolulu (Lulu) Mason -- James Mason starred as Captain Nemo in the 1954 Disney version of _20,000 Leagues Under the Sea_
> 
> ===============
> 
> I first started making notes for this story about a year ago. I had the idea that there was ALL THAT STUFF just lying around the ruins of Tony's lab, waiting to be salvaged. The more I thought about it, the more intrigued I became by the notion of a team of young women investigating the wreckage, each with reasons of her own. 
> 
> Lulu's adventures in _Anemone_ continue in "The Belly of the Beast".
> 
>  
> 
> ...


End file.
